For a global standard, unfortunately this is a nonstarter. I personally agree that e2e encryption is the only communications policy I'll be satisfied with, but

For a global standard, unfortunately this is a nonstarter. I personally agree that e2e encryption is the only communications policy I'll be satisfied with, but unfortunately there are MANY countries where text messaging globally is a protected class of communication that must be accessible to law enforcement. That's the difference between this being a SERVICE and STANDARD. The RCS standard has to work even in those countries that forbid e2e encryption for this sort of comms. Even if it's a minority of countries, I think it would be very difficult to convince carriers in more liberal societies to adopt the standard if it means they won't be able to interoperate with carriers in those more restricted countries. Progress is incremental; the RCS standard, while imperfect, adds a bunch of really desirable features that will help interoperability between platforms and services globally. Apps that integrate with RCS could still offer e2e within their applications; think how iOS does both iMessage (encrypted) and SMS (unencrypted) within the same app. It's just a major improvement to SMS.